1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and system for improving a function of reading electronic tag, and in particular, to a method and system for easily checking an area where a Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tag is installed, using RFID technology, and improving a function of reading information from the RFID tag.
2. Description of the Related Art
An RFID technology based electronic tag is a wireless identification device that automatically collects or records information using a wireless frequency, and utilizes necessary information. The RFID technology based wireless tag has a construction based on a miniaturized integrated circuit (IC) chip and antenna, and obtains information on goods without direct contact. RFID technology is replacing conventional optical bar codes that obtain information by contact, and is being applied to various industrial fields such as electronics, clothes, foods, etc.
An RFID wireless communication system includes an RFID reader to execute a function of reading and decoding information, and an RFID transponder to provide information. The RFID transponder is also called an RFID tag. RFID tags are normally based on a passive type mutual induction method.
RFID tags can be classified into three general groups depending on function. The RFID tag can be classified into a read-write type based on all possible read and write characteristics, a write-once/read-many (worm) type based on once write and frequent read characteristics, and a read-only type based on only read characteristics.
In the read-write tag type, it is possible to frequently change information stored in a memory according to need during normal operation. For example, the read-write tag can be used for a telephone card for express-highway charge collection or a payment card of a bank. In the worm tag type, write is possible only once according to a user request. In the worm tag type, information is written on one bit in a memory of a worm tag on the scene as well as in a manufacturing factory, but the once written information is unchangeable. In the read-only tag type, a global unique code number is written based on a manufacturing company in a manufacturing process and thus, modification itself is impossible.
As described above, for RFID technology using an RFID tag, the RFID tag should be paired with an RFID reader that can identify information of the RFID tag. The RFID tag includes beneficial information on a variety of facilities, for example, traffic information and position information.
An operation of an RFID tag is as follows. If the RFID tag passes within an effective frequency range of an antenna within an RFID reader, the RFID tag senses a signal sent from the RFID reader, and transmits its stored information to the RFID reader. Accordingly, the RFID reader can read information from an RFID tag only if an RFID tag becomes positioned within the effective frequency range of the RFID reader.
However, the RFID reader cannot predict when it can read information from an RFID tag. This is because the RFID reader cannot exactly identify an RFID tag proximal presence. Thus, in a service application operation of an RFID reader, as intending to keep reading information even out of proximity where information is readable from an RFID tag, the RFID reader accumulates unnecessary information. Therefore, performance of the RFID reader deteriorates and the RFID reader also wastes power.
For a detailed description of the above process, a telematics service, an example of the service application, will be described. In the telematics service using RFID technology, an RFID reader installed on a car can be used to obtain position information and road information from an RFID tag attached to road facilities. However, the RFID reader cannot identify whether an RFID tag including traffic information and position information is installed in any particular place. Thus, the RFID reader on the car should always be maintained in the on state, and should repeatedly attempt to read an identification of an RFID tag.
Operation of a conventional RFID reader is shown in FIG. 1. The RFID reader continues executing a read operation even when an RFID tag is not nearby, and the RFID reader may read unnecessary information. Should sequentially read information from the RFID tag occur at an unpredictable time, the RFID reader cannot avoid deteriorated performance the moment it reads the information from the RFID tag positioned at a particular point, due to unnecessary information processing.
Another service application is a building information acquisition service. The building information acquisition service refers to a service in which a building is provided with an RFID tag having building information, such as a shop and the number of floors. When entering the building carrying a terminal equipped with an RFID reader, a user can easily acquire the building information. However, when attempting to keep reading the RFID tag information when the building RFID tag information is not readable, the RFID reader accumulates unnecessary information and deteriorates in performance, and the terminal equipped with the RFID reader also wastes power.
As described above, a conventional RFID reader continually and repeatedly attempts to read RFID tag information in an on state. Thus, the RFID reader performs the read operation even when the RFID tag information is not readable. Accordingly, a method in which the RFID reader can read the RFID tag information with more accuracy and efficiency is desired.